


Trusted Friend of Mine

by RagtimeSpecter



Category: Original Work
Genre: Author focuses way too much on body language, Dialogue, Friendship, Gen, Kinda bad but wtv, Mostly Gen, Not Beta Read, Original Universe, Sort of manipulative, technically canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25040314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RagtimeSpecter/pseuds/RagtimeSpecter
Summary: "...Can I...Do you..." she watched the words start to twist and bunch up in his throat, before he swallowed hard and turned away from her. She took another bite, feeling the sugar stick against her teeth and the rice pop along her tongue.He popped his knuckles and nodded slightly. "Would you mind if I told you something?"Alternatively: Local dumbass tries to get gossip from other dumbass but gets hit with the most condensed and nonspecific version of their years of pining for their best friend instead.
Relationships: Original Female Character & Original Male Character, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Trusted Friend of Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for clicking this, this is the first thing I’ve published in like three years on this site. Characters & universe belong to me, feel free to ask about them if you have any questions. :)
> 
> Content Warnings for: Swearing, Manipulation? (It’s not bad natured though, Crisidia just likes to know everything and keep it to herself), Cocaine & a character taking medicine are mentioned but it’s super super brief.

The stars passed them by. They could pass them by a thousand times, and still be there, unmoved; but the train car was also there, beneath and around them. The train car was moving. 

Crisidia looked at Greyson. He was still as a statue (a tired ass statue, at that) in front of his window. The stars were strolling around in his dark eyes, and they shone like stones in their surfaces. After a while, he blew out through his nose and turned back around to sink into the neck of his sweater. His face was awake, but every part drooped with sleepiness. They had some of the same features. Same golden brown skin and big eyes and long, fluffy hair. At least his palette fit the rest of him, not falling into a wine red or garish green. That would have been ridiculous.

"You awake?" Greyson jerked up a bit at her voice. Slowly, he shook his head.

"No," he mumbled. He yawned and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Come back tomorrow."

Crisidia chuckled and leaned back a bit in her seat. The brown leather groaned and the springs cried under her, like they were full of ghosts. She wouldn't have been surprised if they were.

"...Thinking about anything?" He stared at her. His head shook limply and he slid his back down against the space beneath the dingy, foggy window. 

"No, you?" Stare in the corner, one hand in his pocket, blinking fast, one hand on his face. Interesting.

"You sure? You can tell me anything you want...or, need to," Crisidia said clearly. He took a moment. His eyes climbed around her and hooked onto the littlest details, before they left with the final photo of her smile.

"Nothing's wrong. It's nothing...Uh, sorry. Nothing's wrong." The pause, the fidget, the glance at the door, the repetition, the powerlessness, the prestige. He was an intriguingly rotten liar. 

"...Alright then," Crisidia resolved. She leaned back down towards her lap. He jumped a bit.

"You aren't going to bug me?" A whisper came. The way his stare bored into her activated every nerve in her body. It lit them like a fuse that was murmuring to a blow of her cover. Inhale, exhale.

"I believe you?" She almost snorted. Her hands stayed folded in her lap while her knees pointed to him. She didn't twitch, didn't move her gaze, but blinked once or twice before shrugging. "You don't have to tell me anything."

It took a moment, but he finally pulled away from his seat again. Birds and stray dogs had eyed her bountiful hands less than he looked her around. He dropped his focus to the rug again. Dirt swarmed around each movement his foot made and clouded the light contrast to the heavier air higher up in their damp car. Lucy began to snore across the car with the clunky lull of the train. Even in their sleep, James and Kerring seemed annoyed. 

"...What do you know about Lucy?" Crisidia glanced at him. His hands were shaking profusely while he tried to hold them in the vise of his knobby knees. She raised an eyebrow.

"Uh...you can ask her if you wanna know? I dunno what you wanna learn from me?" He wouldn't. He saw his back rest, his lungs deflate; he wouldn't. 

"What about James?" He was playing his aces first. 

"It's really not my business. Sorry."

"...Izzy Bauker. Do you know anything about her?" She didn't wear underwear to bed. She didn't know how to write a letter. Her mom was in jail. 

"Just ask her, dude. I thought you didn't even like her—? What are you doing?"

He let out a small sigh through the corner of his mouth. She hid a smaller smile in the corner of hers. The stars stood still, but something was picking them out. The car lurched under them again.

He cleared his throat. "So. Hey."

"Hi," Crisidia replied. She bent down and started flitting through different items in her bag between her legs. Greyson sat there quietly, cracking his knuckles. She picked two granola bars out of her bag. "Want one?"

He froze. Then, muttered, "Maybe."

She slid him one across the seat and he tucked it into his pocket. "Thanks," he replied. She nodded at him and unwrapped hers as quietly as possible. The line in front of him was starting to falter in the water. 

"...Can I...Do you..." she watched the words start to twist and bunch up in his throat, before he swallowed hard and turned away from her. She took another bite, feeling the sugar stick against her teeth and the rice pop along her tongue.

He popped his knuckles and nodded slightly. "Would you mind if I told you something?"

She watched him out of the corner of his eye. His heart hammered in his chest like a mouse in front of a snake. She coiled her legs together on the seat. 

"I-I know we aren't, like, super close," he stammered, "but I just— maybe I'm wrong here, but you seem like you can listen to someone. And maybe some, uh, other stuff."

He dipped back and sighed while his hands flapped around and shook. "I don't know what I'm saying. I'm not saying anything—" he laughed, "—but it's important. I mean, it's not important. I just wanna talk about it. But if you don't want to, it's fine. I usually write this stuff down."

"Go for it," Crisidia chirped. He blushed.

"I feel like...I might have a problem. With a friend of mine," he started. "H- They're nice. And they're not the smartest—” Crisidia laughed and he smiled back at her, before he looked back across the car. "—But they make me feel happy. And it doesn't matter what we're doing, I'm just so...happy with them."

"Yeah. Like...how friends make you feel?" She said dumbly, grinning a touch. He shook his head and tapped his foot against the rug.

"I feel like we're more than friends, though. Being with them makes me feel safe, I guess. And it's not because they're strong or big or powerful. They care. I know they care, even when I feel like I don't. They're just like that, they're a lover." His foot was making a steady tap against the floor. "I mean, not my lover. We aren't dating. I-I've never dated anyone."

"You sure? You and Lucy seem close," Crisidia could hardly finish before he scrunched up his face like a muppet.

"Nope, pretty sure," he continued. "I think of them though. They're always on my mind." Writers, Crisidia thought mock-scornfully. He was laying down now. The doctor was in until the real doctor woke up. "They're like...a painting in my head. This beautiful,  
priceless painting. I always go back to their face in both the worst and best of times. It's like...crack cocaine for my serotonin."

"Hey, whatever makes you feel better," Crisidia chuckled. 

"It's different than an interest though," Greyson went on. The lights flickered, and the pink bleeding over the horizon shone in his dark eyes, highlighting the darker blue shadows dressing everything else in the car. "It's not an obsession, either. In a sense— a loose one or a new one or one I can't pinpoint— I'd call it love. Adoration. I adore them. Every word they speak, every color and shade and hue of their person, every stream they bleed and everything they touch. I feel...alive around them. Like Frankenstein's creature struck to life. A new person. Someone— Someone who doesn't care for judgement, or who lives in a world built for us two, where we don't have to fear it and it slips away entirely. And you probably think this is stupid. I've been thinking about this for a while, I guess." They snickered, before he fell back into his words. "But I feel like I'm the only person who knows this much about them. And vice versa. I've seen them at the greatest highs and lows, in joy and anger and worry and sadness. I know them, and I don't think every part of them is good or perfect, but they're...different. To me, it contours their person. It shows off the best parts and sharpens them and makes them more wonderful than anything or anyone else. They mean the world to me. And I dunno what I'd do to feel him lying next to me again."

"...What do you want my help with, bud?" He flustered and paused his foot beating at the floor. 

The train clicked on, burning the tracks beneath them. Wood wobbled between the stiles while bugs freckled the windows. The pink light peered through the window and covered them like sheets. Blue still stamped their backs while the stars began to die under the face of the sun's first ray.

A swallow slid down his throat. His lips were parted for a moment while his hands were casted into a pause on his thighs. They clenched for a moment, then rested. 

"What's wrong with me?"

The sleeping bag across from them rustled and squirmed, until Lucy's head slipped out. She fumbled around for her glasses and fixed them on her impish face, though her hair was still at odds with the rest of her appearance. With her lips pressed into a line, she looked to Crisidia and Greyson. 

"Morning," Crisidia greeted softly.

Lucy groaned and sat up. "It's shit o'clock in the morning. What the fuck are you up for?

"Couldn't sleep."

"Come on. My shift, man, get in the sack." Lucy tossed a pillow at her.

Crisidia threw it back. "Can't sleep."

She stood up, then stared at Greyson. Her mouth twitched. "Buddy, you look like...go to bed. It's my turn."

He shriveled up, folding his boney hands together. "...Yeah. Al-right," Greyson said through a yawn.

His clothes stayed on when he hid himself under the blanket. His back faced them while he curled around his bag, and Lucy and Crisidia watched him stilly drop into sleep.

"Huh...Wonder what his problem is," Lucy said drowsily. She reached into her drawstring and flipped a capsule between her fingers before washing it down with some water.

Cautiously, Crisidia's hand climbed under the seat where he'd once rested. Thick paper folded beneath her fingers and dogeared it from the back. She held it like a card and steadily turned it around. 

It was Greyson, bug-eyed and gaunt-faced; and Oliver, smiling brightly with a few coils of uncut hair falling into his golden eyes. It looked recent in their faces, but the picture was marred with fingerprints and rubbed out in places, like it had been touched too much and aged by curiosity. It was mainly around Oliver, whether that be next to his face or right on the cheek. His hand looked light on Greyson's shoulder, but his arm was firm and strong against his back. Greyson's nimbler hand was sat on Oliver's knee, while the other mimicked his wave to the camera shyly. Their sides and legs were touching. No high shoulders, blurs of escape. Just the two leaning against each other on the log near the bank of the stream back home.

She turned it back around and lifted her thumb off of the awful cursive writing. Random stream in the Great Woods, Oct. 1 2014. I can still feel your hand on my shoulder.

"...I don't think he has a problem," Crisidia mumbled. She bit her nail and slouched with another glance at his sleeping figure. The train rocked on beneath them.

The stars were still all these miles down. When she looked outside, there were less of them than she remembered.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Also sorry if there’s any errors I missed or if this wasn’t great. :0


End file.
